I'm assuming you need a Mac computer to develop ios applications? I have an iphone and ipad but I won't purchase their computers.
It always felt like a smaller company that didn't want to support multiple operating systems. But Apple's not all that small anymore, right? Well, the fallback to that argument is the long-standing habit of pretending other systems don't exist (Mac vs. PC commmercials notwithstanding). Best I recall, one will rarely (if ever) hear Apple comparing, say, iOS to Android. Nope, it's just "iOS is awesome, and here's why". Given that, why port your dev tools to a system that you'd rather pretend didn't exist in the first place?
(Not trying to start a flame war here)
I bought an ipad pro for art - mostly Procreate (is that sad?) but I also use a 16" wacom display tablet attached to my desktop when I'm not mobile. I also use it to play with music recording on mobile with a small midi keyboard and some synth apps. The ipad hardware is really nice. The OS is super limiting to the point of frustration. If there were alternate non-apple hardware of similar quality for what I do on ipad, I would likely switch. As it is the device is just for 'playing' creatively.
For a computer, I regularly run software with no mac ports and I'm not a big fan of the way apple is fundamentally anti consumer in its approach to product repair, OS design and controlling what software can be run on devices. I don't want to invite that sort of intrusive tech control over my life in the future by buying into now as a principle computing device when its more 'open' (even though apple is fundamentally not open) I've seen this kind of thing coming as apple gets more and more aggressive with its policies.
Apple's move to their own silicon only makes me think they walled garden will get an even more impenetrable wall, and I'm just not interested. (The hardware is good but the OS is limiting, and it seems likely to me that the longer apple makes their own silicon the less likely it will play nicely with anyone else. Apple wants you to buy their shit and they don't care if it doesn't work with anyone else's).
You do, if you want to code in Objective-C or Swift (likely the languages tought in Stanford’s lectures). But React Native and Expo’s EAS services (expo.io/eas) has made it possible to avoid buying a Mac. EAS requires a subscription and you also need an Apple Developer sunscription to publish to their AppStore.